Friday, June 9, 2017

Five Proofs is coming

Five Proofs of the Existence of God provides a detailed,
updated exposition and defense of five of the historically most important (but
in recent years largely neglected) philosophical proofs of God's existence: the
Aristotelian proof, the Neo-Platonic proof, the Augustinian proof, the
Thomistic proof, and the Rationalist proof.

This book also offers a detailed
treatment of each of the key divine attributes -- unity, simplicity, eternity,
omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, and so forth -- showing that they
must be possessed by the God whose existence is demonstrated by the proofs.
Finally, it answers at length all of the objections that have been leveled
against these proofs.

This book offers as ambitious and
complete a defense of traditional natural theology as is currently in print.
Its aim is to vindicate the view of the greatest philosophers of the past --
thinkers like Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Leibniz, and many others
-- that the existence of God can be established with certainty by way of purely
rational arguments. It thereby serves as a refutation both of atheism and of
the fideism which gives aid and comfort to atheism.

“A watershed
book… Feser has completely severed the intellectual legs upon which modern
atheism had hoped to stand.” Matthew
Levering, James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary

“Edward
Feser is widely recognized as a top scholar in the history of philosophy in
general, and in Thomistic and Aristotelian philosophy in particular… Feser
admirably achieves his goal, and Five
Proofs of the Existence of God is a must read for anyone interested in
natural theology. I happily and highly
recommend it.” J. P. Moreland,
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Biola University

“Yet another
fine book by Edward Feser… Feser replies to (literally) all of the objections and
shows convincingly how the most popular objections (the kind one hears in
Introduction to Philosophy courses) are very often completely beside the point
and, even when they’re not, are ‘staggeringly feeble and overrated’… Five
Proofs of the Existence of God puts the lie to the common assumption
among professional philosophers that natural theology was done in forever by
the likes of Hume and Kant, never to rise again.” Alfred
J. Freddoso, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame

“Refutes with devastating effect the standard objections to theistic
proofs, from David Hume to the New Atheists.
Feser draws on the best from both scholastic and modern analytic
philosophy, including persuasive defenses of the real distinction in creatures
between essence and existence, the absolute simplicity of God, and the
continued importance of causation in a relativistic and quantum-mechanical
world.” Robert C. Koons, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin

“A powerful and important book... The concluding chapter, where Feser
replies to possible objections to his arguments, is a gem; it alone is worth
the price of this excellent work.” Stephen
T. Davis, Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy, Claremont McKenna College

59 comments:

Looking forward to it! Can I expect it to address Kantian objections more so than in your other works? (Aquinas briefly discussed him, but you've --perhaps rightly-- focused most of your effort on Hume.)

One of the things that pushed me from a very shakey theist when I first started reading our host here to being a firm believer was the cumulative effect of the rejection of materialism by Nagel, Russell, Ayer, as well as the reductios of materialism offered by its advocates like Quine, Dennett, the Churchlands and Rosenberg. The separate blog posts on these guys were interesting, but it was only once the arguments of all these people were aggregated that I realized just how serious the problems with materialism were. It isn't just one or two guys with a few clever arguments.

Of course, you need further argument to positively establish the existence of God, but it does get you to the existence of a wholly immaterial aspect of reality and perhaps the priority of the immaterial over the material, which set the stage for arguments for God.

Will any of this be in the book? The destruction of materialism as a viable option would seem to be part of the way we establish the existence of God.

I don't think that would be enough. I think what needs to be destroyed is the idea that the world can exist as a matter of brute fact. As long as this can't be ruled out completely, someone can pretty much always question the existence of God as cause of the world.

As far as I know Feser has addressed believing the world exists as a matter of brute fact, but if I remember, his point was different. He was pointing out that if you believe it, it casts doubt on almost everything else you could possibly know for certain.

I could be wrong, but I've never seen someone effectively refute the idea. I've only seen people show how it raises serious conflicts with other beliefs.

I agree. And I would add the stronger “how serious the problems with naturalism are”. Naturalism allows for non-material substances but has them all follow mechanical principles. In other words according to naturalism the metaphysically fundamental nature of reality is mechanical.

I have consistently found that both when the theist confronts her own doubts, or when she discusses with atheists, focusing on the problems of naturalism is much more effective than focusing on the proofs for theism. Intellectually speaking. As long as nobody comes up with a non-theistic non-naturalistic metaphysics, arguing against naturalism is usually much more effective than arguing for theism.

This off-topic but I've been struggling with this. I'm primarily seeking an answer from Dr. Feser but I invite others to help me. Feser seems to acknowledge in Aquinas and TLS that Aquinas' presentation of the First Way doesn't get you to a First Mover that is pure act. Rather, one has to resort to this principle: "it is evident that anything whatever operates insofar as it is a being" (QDA 19). That is, just as causal power is ordered in a per se fashion and must ultimately trace back to a first mover who has causal power in a purely actual way, so too existence or being is ordered in a per se fashion and must trace back to a first mover who has its existence in a purely actual way.

Feser seems to suggest that if something exists in a purely actual manner then it has no potencies at all. Does this follow though? I think this premise needs further justification. Why should I believe that something must be devoid of all potencies if its act of existence is non-derivative?

You're probably aware of it already, but any point in also posting your question to http://classicaltheism.boardhost.com? I get the impression it is a kind of unofficial sister entity to Feser's blog itself.

It was Feser for me. Was studying Dooyeweerd and Kuyper a few years ago, then thought, "Why don't I READ these Scholastics before I give up on them?" Feser's book was the first one I came across. Dense, but worth it.

BTW, couldn't we use the transcendentals to argue for a Thomistic presuppositionalism?

https://jgfriesen.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/marlet.pdf is an interesting read regarding the relationship between Dooyeweerd's thought and 20th century Catholic theology. I am somewhat skeptical of the idea of a Thomistic pressupositionalism. Even though it isn't about exactly the same topic, Etienne Gilson's book "Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge" is a good critique of attempts to form a synthesis between Thomistic philosophy and post-scholastic thought.

Congratulations on the new book, I just wanted to know a little about your forthcoming work on act/potency and block universe,This in a sense is the only serious doubt I have about the argument, so glad to see the issue getting addressed in print by you.Can you please kindly, just briefly outline what sort of theses you are going to defend? in particular do you argue that Block view is incoherent on grounds relating to reality of act/potency or do you argue that Block word poses no threat to act/potency distinction?

Thanks for the reminder, Vince. Yes,I read it last year, but it didn't hurt to read it again (and listen to Craig's video).

An interesting sidelight: the verdict of heresy against Biddle, was made in Gloucester. (And was not the last such against him.) Note that Gloucester was a Puritan stronghold, which the Cavaliers were unable to take. (They won a battle but not by enough to carry on the siege.)

This was not, as some might suspect, some crypto-Roman bunch of Caroline high churchmen. It was Calvinists who rejected "God is a person."

What is it that got into today's Protestants here? It's not all of them, I admit. But it does look like polytheism in disguise.

Yet Aquinas is said to have not just 1 but 5 "proofs" of the existence of god! (Yes, I realize the 5 proofs by Aquinas are not to be confused with the 5 proofs covered by Feser, but there is inextricable overlap, since "The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion." )

If an argument is valid, and the premises are true then it is sound, and thus comprehensible.

Any claim that the First Way is sound yet the Thomistic god is incomprehensible is self contradictory.

Congratulations Dr. Feser! This sounds tremendous. I remember meeting you two years ago at Princeton when you hinted about this book. I cannot wait to see the fruit of your labor. Come back to Princeton to give a talk and I'll be there!

What is it we know to go on in metaphysics? First we have the data themselves, namely the whole of the common human condition, both quantitative and qualitative. And secondly we have some assumptions, both epistemological and metaphysical, which seem to be self-evident to us. Assumptions such as, say, the validity of classical logic or of Occam’s razor, or the claim that there is only one dimension of time or that an object cannot exist in two places at once.

Now the atheist has a worldview which accounts for all the data, namely some materialist account based on the physical sciences plus some supervenience theory which grounds our qualitative experiences to physical states of the human brain. I say this worldview accounts for all the data in the sense no contradiction is known between such a worldview and the data. Therefore, as far as the actual data goes this atheistic worldview is possibly true. There is a possible world which is atheistic and in which all the data of the human condition obtain.

Suppose now the atheist confronts a formally valid proof for God. The atheist will look to find where some assumption of that proof, epistemological or metaphysical, contradicts her atheistic worldview and will proceed to deny it, perhaps moved to that denial by the very proof encountered. The theist will then argue that that assumption is self-evident, or required by reason, or something along those lines – but the atheist will point out that many other such assumptions have been proven wrong in the past, for example the flatness of physical space, or the possibility of concurrency of physical events, or the impossibility of an object being in many places at once, or the non-existence of different infinities, or the non-existence of uncaused events, and so on. At this point I think fruitful discussion stops for the simple reason that there is no common ground to proceed.

If the above picture is precise then what follows? Well it follows that at some point the human condition is such that the educated person must make a *personal choice* about which metaphysical worldview is the more reasonable one. Being a theist and thus experiencing life from the theistic perspective I find the reasonableness of theism overwhelmingly greater than that of atheism. But perhaps the atheist, experiencing life as an atheist, will beg to differ. The world, as John Hick observed, seems to be religiously ambiguous.

“Unless... There is knowledge that exist prior to our experience somehow.”

All knowledge forms part of experience. If we didn’t experience it how would we know about it?

Now philosophers sometimes speak of “a priori knowledge”, “basic knowledge”, and so on – and posit special epistemic properties for such kinds. It is still the case that such knowledge is part of our experience of life. And it is still the case that the atheist can describe how her worldview explains the mechanisms that would produce human brains on which such experiences supervene. So when the theist argues “It’s absurd to deny this principle” the atheist will answer “Let me explain on purely mechanical grounds how it came about that our brain makes us feel this way.” In a sense the atheist has an universal defeater for any principle that contradicts her worldview.

“The theist will then argue that the science that the atheist is relying on also makes the same assumptions that the theist is appealing to for his arguments.”

Yes, interesting. I suppose the atheist cannot deny those principles she herself used to build her worldview. But what principles are these? Strictly speaking the physical sciences only catalog physical phenomena (namely the quantitative part of the data available to us) and discover mathematical patterns present in them. The only necessary principles here are mathematics (which entails classical logic). The materialistic interpretation of scientific knowledge, that is the description of a material world which would produce said physical phenomena to be experienced in our brain, do not require any assumptions except, again, the validity of mathematics. Does there exist an argument for theism that relies only on the data and no other principle apart from the validity of mathematics? It’s hard to see how, but here’s an intriguing possibility:

We know that physical phenomena are mathematically ordered, and the atheist uses that knowledge to describe a reality which is also mathematically (and thus mechanically) ordered. Now the mechanisms required for evolution of intelligent brains capable of discovering such order are well understood, and entail indeed a mathematically ordered world. In other words among all possible worlds only in those appropriately ordered will brains evolve intelligent enough for discovering and exploiting that order (like we do). Thanks to science though we know that the mathematical order present in phenomena is of a particularly sophisticated kind. The mechanism of evolution does not require material reality to be ordered according to such sophisticated math. Therefore among all the possible atheistic worlds in which intelligent brains will evolve the vast majority is based on simple math. This deep fact about the world (or more precisely about the human condition) is thus impossible to explain on atheism. It looks like at the deepest possible level of physical reality the message is written “designed by a mathematician”.

We know that physical phenomena are mathematically ordered, and the atheist uses that knowledge to describe a reality which is also mathematically (and thus mechanically) ordered.

Oh, please. We 'know' this, that mathematically ordered implies mechanically ordered, and still "The only necessary principles here are mathematics "?

Now the mechanisms required for evolution of intelligent brains capable of discovering such order are well understood,

Cough, cough.. retch. Bleaaaggghhh. Well underSTOOD? Is he insane? There are 6 competing theories of human intelligence / consciousness, which are incompatible. ALL of them involve a huge amount of hand waving in the middle. None of them have a remotely "complete" account of how evolution achieves brains like ours. This takes any liberal claptrap that strikes his fancy and treats it as not only reasonable, but beyond debate. Not a clear thought in that muzzy head of his.

"Yet another fine book by Edward Feser… Feser replies to (literally) all of the objections and shows convincingly how the most popular objections (the kind one hears in Introduction to Philosophy courses) are very often completely beside the point and, even when they’re not, are ‘staggeringly feeble and overrated'."

He achieves this hugely ambitious task in 320 pages? I am curious how detailed he can possibly be to all the arguments of the atheists while at the same time putting forward his arguments in favor.

Because the popular objections are almost invariably either based on misconceptions or just plain bad. A good objection might take fifty pages or more to adequately discuss - many of these bad ones take at most two.

I think Anonymous (II) is correct. Many atheists take for granted there are great refutations to theism. Unfortunately there is very often an ignorance of their own philosophical assumptions, so their arguments are doomed from the get go. A common problem is the fact atheists often don't even know that they hold a specific (or require a specific) philosophical foundation, such as scientism. Universal skepticism is also extremely problematic if one wishes to argue any position at all because it is just a deeply flawed epistemological beginning for any rational pursuit of knowledge.

A lot of books refuting atheist arguments contain some pretty good arguments, but are a bit slapdash, because most of the people writing them don't have an academic background in philosophy or just aren't as thorough as Feser.

Also, keep in mind that many objections can be classed by underlying assumptions. By addressing those, you can handle a number of strictly distinct arguments in a relatively few pages. Just as some arguments against the Ontological Argument address only one or a few versions, while others are more general. (And I am here thinking of real philosophical objections, not the gnus.)

Dr. Feser, would you consider a blog entry discussing the implications of political order(s)/systems against reductionist or materialist worldviews? Given the polarization we see today and your strengths in argumentation, I think the very divide and controversy we are seeing in itself is able to provide evidence if not proof of the transcendental good desired by all (and the aim or final cause of political activity).

Also a good way to talk about or pint to documents like Rerum Novarum, a favorite I think we share.

Dr. Feser, thank you for all the work here, offering a great window into classic thought for those of us seeking a window into it — as a Lay Dominican (currently under Temporary Promise), I've found this access to Thomism particularly useful (I've recently gotten your AQUINAS and SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS both for that and as a guide to better read authors such Garrigou-Lagrange, Maritain, and Stein).

I was curious, especially seeing your 2015 piece on the Christian and Islamic understanding of God mentioned by Ramesh Ponnuru in Bloomberg the other day, if there's anything else to say regarding Bernie Sanders and Russell Vought (on the Christian-Islamic God question) or on Tim Farron's resignation from leadership of the U.K. Liberal-Democrats (on the subsequent matter of Christianity's philosophical relationship with Liberalism). I'm not sure if this is he best place to ask (versus emailing you), but your previous blog posts on those issues sprung immediately to mind when reading about those stories.

Again, thank you and keep up the good work — there are many decided amateurs who read here without commenting (my field and degrees are in history and museums, so any philosophy or theology is either personal reading or old undergraduate electives).

Yes! If western civilisation has any chance it will be because books like this are shared far and wide. I'd like to see someone put together youtube videos explaining the proofs as an intro for newcomers.

About Me

I am a writer and philosopher living in Los Angeles. I teach philosophy at Pasadena City College. My primary academic research interests are in the philosophy of mind, moral and political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. I also write on politics, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective.